GOP respectful but skeptical of Sally Jewell

REI CEO Sally Jewell won bipartisan praise for her broad experience at her confirmation hearing Thursday, but Republicans said President Barack Obama’s nominee for interior secretary left a lot of questions unanswered.

“I think it is clear that she has some areas that she needs to get up to speed on and understand,” Energy and Natural Resources Committee ranking member Lisa Murkowski said afterward. “There’s some areas that there’s some gaps in understanding what actually comes with this portfolio. Doesn’t mean that she can’t learn it.”

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Jewell's opening statement at hearing

The Alaska Republican said Jewell appeared a bit nervous during the first half of the three-hour hearing, although Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) was more blunt.

“She seems underprepared for the range of questions from both Republicans and Democrats,” Barrasso said afterward.

Jewell appeared uncomfortable at times before taking a brief break, including when she was questioned about her past support for a carbon tax and her history in the conservation community.

Barrasso criticized Jewell’s membership in the National Parks Conservation Association, which has sued the federal government dozens of times while she has served as vice chairman on its board of trustees.

“It’s unsettling to many that you have a fundamental conflict of interest when it comes to leading the Department of Interior because many of these 59 lawsuits that your organization has filed against the government are still pending,” he told her.

Jewell replied that she played no role in NPCA’s decisions to sue the government and that if the lawsuits involved Interior while she was in charge, she would seek guidance from the agency’s ethics officials.

Barrasso also homed in on a sore point for conservatives: Jewell’s past support for a carbon tax. But she said that at Interior, the issue would not come into her purview.

“The president has made it clear that he is not pursuing an approach to carbon at this point, carbon tax. And if confirmed in the position, I will look forward to bringing my experience to bear, as I’ve said, on multiple uses of public lands and all-of-the-above energy strategy, and I would not be in a position to take a position, frankly, around this issue,” she said.

Before the hearing, conservative groups sought to draw attention to comments Jewell made in October 2008 advocating a carbon tax.

“I know tax is a dirty word, but if we were paying a carbon tax that accounted for our impact on greenhouse gases, that would in fact change our consumption, just as higher oil prices have changed our consumption and made it more economic for other sources to come into play,” Jewell said at the time. “Regulation plays an important role in driving behavior.”

Barrasso said afterward that he has not made a decision on whether he would oppose Jewell or try to block her nomination.

Murkowski was also noncommittal on whether she would support Jewell’s nomination. “I think you heard from some of my colleagues some expressed reservations,” Murkowski said. “Obviously, there’s a lot of questions that will be submitted for the record.”

Still, Jewell’s background, which included a job as an engineer at Mobil Oil early in her career, won praise from Republicans.

“I will acknowledge it is very important to have a background in energy development, as you do,” Murkowski said at the outset.